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New regulations in China ban journalists from quoting foreign media

Patrick Boehler

BIO

Patrick Boehler has published on China and Southeast Asia in four languages for publications in the US, Europe and Asia. After stints with Austria's ministries of defence and foreign affairs in Vienna and Beijing, he began his reporting career in Kuala Lumpur with the Malaysian online news portal Malaysiakini and, later, The Irrawaddy Magazine, a Myanmar exile publication in Thailand. He holds a doctorate in political science and has taught journalism at the University of Hong Kong.
Follow him on Twitter: @mrbaopanrui

The front-page of the China Press and Publishing Journal, April 16, 2013. Screenshot from its website

On the day Chinese journalists woke up to news that the New York Times won a Pulitzer for its report on former Premier Wen Jiabao's family fortune, China's media regulator issued new regulations banning reports on foreign media coverage.

"All kinds of media work units may not use any unauthorised news products provided by foreign media or foreign websites," according to a notice issued by the General Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.

The notice also does not allow any reporting from reporting any information from "informers, freelancers, NGOs, commercial organisations" without "prior verification."

A report on the notice was published on Tuesday on the front page of the China Press and Publishing Journal, a subsidiary of the regulator.

The notice calls on media organisations to "strengthen the management" of their websites, blogs and micro-blogs, including private micro-blog accounts.

"Strengthened management" is understood to be party-speak for allowing less leeway in sharing information online that couldn't have appeared in newspapers in the first place.

Media organisations were once again told not to cite or report on information from the internet, or to report "gossip, rumour and speculation".

They should "intuitively suppress the infiltration and spread of harmful information."

The statement comes on the day millions of people discussed the Boston Marathon bomb blasts on Sina Weibo. Photos and video shared by eyewitnesses provided more information than state media, which eventually resorted to these accounts in their coverage of the tragedy.

The gag order is reminiscent of a statement by the regulator's predecessor, the General Administration of Press and Publication, in 2011 barring the inclusion of information gathered online or via text messages in news stories.